Boyer Rickel, Musick’s Hand-Maid

Boyer Rickel’s other publications include two poetry collections, remanence(Parlor Press) and arreboles(Wesleyan), a memoir-in-essays, Taboo(Wisconsin), as well as two poetry chapbooks, Tempo Rubato(Green Linden Press) and reliquary(Seven Kitchens Press). Recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Arizona Commission on the Arts, he taught in the University of Arizona Creative Writing Program for twenty years.

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Waiting for a sign now that his heart has stopped– like some tabloid hoax, like those Virgin sightings. Mary’s face in a tree stump. So he joins all my other voiceless ghosts. I’d hoped time would implode that mountain, but he’s topped the pile: my infant nephew and three old aunts, the geologic accretion of friends’ parents I ex-out in my address book. Names lopped

like blighted tree limbs. I’d like to think I’m slipping my chains, or just editing to essence; it stands to reason loss purifies the soul . . . Such clichés burn the tongue. Live coals. Death, grant a son’s impossible whim: to hear that voice, to touch those giant hands.